High Availability
Skelta BPM and
I
ntroduction
C
ontents
High Availability: An Overview
3
---BPM and High Availability
3
---Benefits of a Highly Available BPM Solution
3
---How to Achieve High Availability
4
---How Skelta BPM Enables High Availability
4
---Software Features That Enable High Availability
5
---BPM and high availability using a virtualized or cloud environment 5
---Why BPM on Cloud?
6
---Conclusion 6
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H
igh Availability
-
An Overview
High Availability is a system design approach for analyzing and managing the impact of planned and unplanned outages. It is one of the most important issues for organizations today. High availability solutions provide a robust backup capability so that applications keep running without disruption, even during system outages. An organization that is planning to implement a high availability strategy must perform a thorough analysis of its business processes to clearly identify the processes that require high availability. However, there are certain prerequisites that must be considered before implementing high availability, such as:
• Restructuring the overall IT architecture so that it can easily adapt to the high availability model
• Getting rid of legacy systems or outdated software and hardware
• Streamlining all important business processes
• Training and skill development
• Investments in more advanced and robust systems
Highly available systems or solutions can reduce service interruptions, freeing IT staff to focus more on performance or capacity management of services. They also provide disaster recovery capability while significantly reducing downtime
B
PM
and
High
Availability
With increasing process complexity and rising compliance costs, the need is more than ever for implementing a secure, highly scalable solution. Organizations are looking for ways to minimize downtime by deploying systems or solutions which are specially designed for failover or redundancy.
management. BPM systems must evolve along with the company.
As the company grows so do its business processes and data, which ultimately increases the demand for:
• More computing power (since process automation increases)
• More data storage capacity
• Secure backup plan to maintain long-term availability of data
• Improved and highly available services A robust BPM solution, which is agile as well as responsive to changing business needs, is very much required to deliver reliable and highly available services.
Benefits of a Highly Available
BPM Solution
Following are the reasons why high availability and business process management must go hand in hand:
• A highly available BPM solution can help minimize the impact of planned outages (when systems or data are temporarily taken offline to perform necessary maintenance tasks)
• Unplanned outages can be managed more efficiently with high availability solutions • In the event of a disaster, all
mission-critical data and applications can easily be recovered and resumed to the normal state within minutes
• High availability solutions can help with backup window reduction, which means you can minimize the time your services remain unavailable during backups
Skelta Database
Machine 1
Components Installed:
Skelta Farm database
Client Installation Web Server Skelta Server Skelta Database Share Point Client
Skelta Repository database
Web Farm
Machine 2 Server 2 Server N
Components Installed:
*Skelta Services (including Skelta
Advanced Server Service) Skelta Services (including Skelta Advanced Server Service) Skelta Services (including Skelta Advanced Server Service) Skelta Enterprise Console
Skelta Enterprise Console Skelta Central Configuration Site
Skelta Enterprise Console Skelta Central Configuration Site Skelta Central Configuration Site
Components Installed: Components Installed:
H
ow to Achieve
High Availability
In today’s competitive business environment an unscheduled downtime can seriously affect a company’s business as well as its profitability. Avoiding unplanned outages or IT systems failures is one of the key concerns for companies across the globe. Therefore, systems and applications must be designed, deployed and maintained in a way that ensures their high availability while reducing the risks associated with unstable platforms.
Below are two important scenarios; they differ dependent on the unique needs related to system load and usage patterns.
1. High Availability and Load of
Web Servers
This scenario requires the Web Farm to be installed on multiple web servers. Databases and services should be installed on different machines. This is more appropriate for
situations which demand quick response from web servers under heavy load situations.
2. High Availability and Load on
Services or High Availability and
Load on Services and Web Servers
or High Availability of Services and
High Load on Web Servers
There are two ways of achieving this:
• Place application services and databases on different machines. Make sure that the services reside as a cluster on a Web Farm. • Maintain a Web Farm with Web Servers and
application services cluster on separate machines. The application databases should be installed on a different machine.
These two deployment techniques ensure high availability and scalability by enabling the load to be equally distributed among all the machines in the cluster and the Web Farm. Failure of one server does not impact other servers. In case a server goes offline, the service is maintained by other servers. This provides
failover capabilities to your IT environment, allowing you to easily add or remove machines from the Web Farm or from the cluster.
H
ow Skelta BPM Enables
High Availability
Skelta BPM offers a range of deployment scenarios that are in line with the deployment methodologies discussed above. Shown below are the two deployment scenarios, which can help organizations achieve a highly available Skelta BPM solution.
Scenario 1: Addressing High
Availability of Web Servers
In this scenario, the Web Server and Skelta Services are installed on the same machine, while Databases are installed on a separate machine. By hosting this set up on multiple computers, a Web Farm with clustered Skelta Services can easily be created.Scenario 2: Addressing High
Availability on Services
In this scenario, Skelta Services and Skelta Databases are installed on different machines, and the Web Farm is installed on multiple web servers. Web Servers in the Web Farm will have Skelta Central
different hosts in the Web Farm, which results in low response time and high application throughput.
S
oftware Features
That
Enable High Availability
The Skelta BPM software is specifically designed to support failover and clustering capabilities. It comes equipped with the following features:• Active-Active load balancing • Scalability
• Failover capabilities
Active-Active Load Balancing
A true Active-Active load balancing can be achieved only when the load is shared uniformly by all the servers in the cluster. The Skelta Workflow Engine and the Skelta Task Scheduler services on different servers form a cluster to share the load. The workflow client always requests the least used server in the cluster for workflow execution. The Skelta Workflow Engine, during the execution of a workflow, identifies the least used server and then forwards the workflow execution to this server–thereby enabling workload distribution across the servers.Scalability
Depending on the number of workflow execution requests, the number of servers running the Skelta Workflow Engine in a cluster can be increased or decreased. Once the configuration is done and the Skelta Workflow Engine is started, it automatically joins the cluster and starts sharing the load immediately. Failover: This feature of Skelta BPM supports safe shutdown or restart of any server running the Skelta Workflow Engine in the cluster, without affecting the execution of workflows running on that server. In cases of shutdown or restart, the other Skelta Workflow Engine services in the cluster resume all pending tasks of the server that was shutdown.
In addition to the deployment scenarios described above, below are few capabilities that you must consider while planning for a High Availability Solution:
• Backup plan for server data supporting critical services to ensure recovery from hardware failure and disaster
• Centralized monitoring of essential
processes for availability and performance across platforms and physical and virtual environments
• More efficient server, networking, and storage to provide maximum availability and cost-effectiveness
• Consistency and ease deployment of well-defined configurations
• Real-time visibility into hardware and software assets across the enterprise
B
PM and high availability
using a virtualized or cloud
environment
Virtualization and cloud computing can enable organizations to rapidly create and deploy applications while saving infrastructure, application, support and deployment costs.
Skelta Database
Machine 2
Components Installed:
Skelta Farm database
Client Installation Web Server Skelta Server Skelta Database Share Point Client
Skelta Repository database Web Farm
Machine 3 Server 2 Server N
Components Installed:
Skelta Enterprise Console Skelta Enterprise Console Skelta Central Configuration Site
Skelta Enterprise Console Skelta Central Configuration Site Skelta Central Configuration Site
Components Installed: Components Installed:
Skelta Server
Machine 2
Components Installed:
W
hy BPM
on Cloud?
Business Process as a Service (BPaaS) is basically cloud-based business process management that delivers business processes through BPM tools or applications hosted on the cloud, in a pay-per-use pricing model. The benefits of using BPM services on cloud are just like any other cloud service. BPaaS eliminates the need for upfront capital investments while reducing operational expenditure. It reduces the efforts required to upgrade operations and systems, and improves organization’s capability to scale up its services. Some of the key benefits of hosting BPM services or solutions on cloud are as follows:• Cloud provides a secure, scalable and robust platform which ensures high availability of services
• Using BPM on cloud means no upfront capital investment in machinery and software
• Software upgrade requirements are taken care of by the cloud service provider, which saves time and money both
• It reduces operational expenditure and increases business agility and consistency of application services
• Cloud-based BPM services reduce
dependency on IT and enable IT resources to focus on key business needs
• Resources are available on demand, which means you can scale up your business as and when required
• Increased availability and data security to ensure fast recovery of data
C
on
clusion
A
bout
Invensys Skelta BPM
Invensys Skelta is the recognized industry leader in .NET based BPM technology through its product – Skelta BPM which offers 100% embeddable, Enterprise class, BPM solutions to help organizations achieve
operational agility.
Skelta BPM enables easy to deploy, web based process workflows across the business latitude and puts the control directly in the hands of the users.
Skelta BPM, through its web based graphical user interface enables business users, analysts, managers and other stakeholders to collaborate with developers in:
9 Process Definition and Design 9 Process Execution
9 Process Monitoring and Optimization
Our BPM approach empowers organizations to achieve Operational resilience through process agility. We have consistently helped our customers achieve their BPM objectives and enhance
operational efficiency through: 9 Our strong product line
9 Mature solutions framework (Accounts Payable, Leave Management, Document Management System and solutions for any business area) 9 Evolved Professional Services for a seamless post sale experience
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